Regulating free press - friend or foe?

Everyone has heard of the Leveson inquiry. Everyone who has any inkling in finding out about the world, that is. Lord Justice Leveson was given an important task in the matter of whether or not the press needs an independent body to slice and dice. The inquiry followed the demise of News of the World, after their royal editor and a private investigator were convincted of illegal interception of phone messages. It seemed to transpire that the media was going rogue in attempts to sell.

Free press. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers". This concept is also covered by the same laws as freedom of speech, which gives equal rights to published and spoken opinion. It's probably worth noting that not all states are considered to have freedom of press, as it is a democratic concept not widly popular in totalitatian states such as China or Nepal. That, of course, leads to the concept of censorship, seeing as you can't have one without the other. The democratic ideology of freedom of speech dates back from the Ancient Athens, but it has its limitations, even in the 21st century.

In the case of the result of the Leveson inquiry, introducing an independent royal regulatory body in a country that has valued freedom of speech since the 17th century would probably end in disaster. Sure, the idea behind this is a respectable unbiased organisation, supposedly there to protect people's basic rights to privacy and freedom of speech. But seeing as it has been agreed among the country's main political parties, that is sufficient proof to understand how biased this ideal body would be. Like in any other country, independent of the regime, politics is a source of power and that means that people at the helm of this country can, and will, influence just about everything. It doesn't matter how much they try to convince us their objectives are the welfare of the system, ultimately all is reduced to a battle for power. And that's exactly what politics is. Every politician wants to leave something behind. But in order for them to achieve anything, they need power.

The regulatory body in charge of watching over the freedom of the press will end up in censorship. By applying the simplest of definitions of freedom of speech and censorship, any regulation of the now free press is censorship. Once newspapers and magazines sign on to this, there is no say to what they will or will not be allowed to publish in the future. And what about the Internet? How does the Leveson inquiry apply to a medium designed especially for the freedom of the media? I am in no way arguing that invading people's privacy in order to make the news is excusable. But it seems ridiculous to cripple the very basic definition of 'media' in order to make politics.